More Thought Police in Obamaland

2013 April 7

by Rob Meltzer

I’ve been reading Bruce Levine’s new book, the Fall of the House of Dixie; the Civil War and the Social Revolution that Transformed the South. Here’s how Levine defines racism: “consigning African Americans to second-class status, denying them in most places not only the right to vote but also equal access to the courts, public schools, public accommodations, housing, and jobs.”

It is not racist to send the following joke to your small circle of friends, : “A little boy says, ‘mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white’ and she responds, “well, Barack, from what I remember of that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark.” but apparently having the gall to tell a joke at the expense of the president does deny you access to a federal job.

I’ve been thinking about the Mike Rice thing at Rutgers. For those who have missed the latest, Mike Rice has been fired as his coach job for the Rutgers basketball team for throwing basketballs at his players and calling them faggots. The Athletic Director has now also been fired. At a demonstration last week, a group of students demanded the firing of the Rutgers president, and a student was quoted at the demonstration on CNN saying “this is the same as Penn State.” Really? A coach calling a straight six foot seven basketball player, who could pound the coach into a pile of dust in an instant, is the same as a coach raping children in a locker room shower? Really? Do people really see the situation the same?

I’ve been struck by some of the details coming out about this story. First, there have been a number of players who have pointed out that the video which is being shown was pieced together by someone who apparently wanted Mike Rice’s job. In an article in AP entitled Two Rutger Players Defend Fired Coach Rice, these players have also questioned whether the video has shown what it claims to show. Here’s what a player had to say: “He wasn’t a guy we hated or despised. After practice, we would all go in the locker room and laugh. It was never a sad face or a hung head. What he did was he separated the court and he separated life. When we were on the court, we were on the court, we were on the court and locked in. That’s why you see so many intense moments because he was so locked in on turning this program around. When we got in the locker room we were a family. We laughed.”

In fact, there weren’t complaints from the team, and there is no evidence that he did anything beyond his job. And that apparently was the result of the AD and the president’s reaction when this matter was investigated in the proper channels.

Denying a gay player a place on a team or creating a situation in which a gay player would be ostracized may be homophobia. Calling a straight player a faggot to inspire a player is called First Amendment speech.

But not in Obama’s America. In America, the use of speech is now the same as raping a child in the shower.

The First Amendment exists to protect vile and offensive speech. All the more reason to repeat, to prove that we still can. Second, I don’t think it is vile or offensive. i think it is a stupid joke and it isn’t very funny, but no more offensive than a cartoon that lampoons the prophet in Danish newspapers, and certainly no more offensive than the Satanic Verses. Interesting, Tom, that once again you side with the terrorists…

This is silly. The First Amendment doesn’t protect anyone from criticism for what he said. The First Amendment doesn’t protect a highly paid employee from being fired by his employer for saying things that embarrassed the institution.

Actually, Rick, criticism is fine. Firing a public employee for his free speech activities is far more problematic. Particularly when the speech is in furtherance of the work the person is hired to do. Rice should sue Rutgers and the state and I hope he does.

No, its a joke, and we know that it is an effective joke because it bothers you. that’s why we have the First Amendment, because this kind of speech needs to be protected. You can’t be fired froma federal job for speaking, unless of course the president chooses to defund you. That’s why Congress needs to investigate–because this judge was canned for free speech while being considered hostile to administration policies. Equally, a coach was fired from a state institution for engaging in politically incorrect speech. If you need any more proof that the First Amendment needs to be protected, we need look no further than the horrifying idea that without the First Amendment your opinion about the content of speech might be relevant.

We know that you hate the constitution, tom. I don’t. fortunately, you don’t get to be an arbiter of what is said or spoken. I also don’t think physical violence is a vice. Indeed, physical violence was the birth stool of our country. if you were around then, we’d all still be speaking the King’s English.

More hysterical distortion. You can say what you like. When it’s vile and disgusting it stands to be called out as such. Smarter people than me probably decide to ignore your stirrings of our “birth stool.” I am weak.

Nonetheless, you constantly say things on this blog that are vile and offensive, bigoted and anti-semitic, and yet you get upset when people call you on it. Your right to say stupid and asinine things, which you do all the time, is on par with the protection level of “as I remember that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark, barack.” You want your speech protected while trying to deny it to others. That’s interesting.

Once again you’d rather lie than have a candid discussion. I’ve suggested nothing to curtail your right to behave abominably. I pointed out that your behavior was pointlessly destructive and distracting (I equated it with gratuitous violence) well, because it is. As for your charges of my bigotry and anti-semitism, etc, I think this “stool sample” would serve as a specimen for the post we have going on civility. There was some discussion in the On Being broadcast about how such promiscuous charges such as this serve to derange and derail useful difference.

Mr. Meltzer, your attempt to justify or minimize this coach’s violent, sadistic, and despicable behavior by insisting that it is a free speech issue parallels those folks who insist that the Second Amendment guarantees every citizen the right to arm their homes with weapons of war that belong nowhere else but on the battlefield. Same outrageous stretch, same distorted reasoning, and the same contempt for logic or common sense. And, by the way, you can at least get the facts straight. The Athletic Director in question resigned. He was not fired.

I’m one of those Second Amendment folk. You may have a driveway at your house. I have a defense perimeter, with a free fire zone and a battlespace with adequate space for reload. If you want to spout nuspeak, go ahead. Nixon also resigned, right?

Back to the issue at hand, Mr. Meltzer. The inescapable fact of the matter remains that, in this day and age, there is only one group of people nearly as incomprehensible and baffling as those few remaining coaches who are hopelessly primitive, obsolete, and old-school and who insist on using such an archaic, abusive, and inappropriate style of instruction, teaching, or training that Rice employed. They are people like yourself who continue to excuse, justify, or defend it. Rice is an incurable fossil and not only is there no question that he should have been fired, it should have occurred much sooner.

People like me. Correct. ACLU lawyers and participating lawyers. I’ll agree with that. You bet I would defend rice. And bin laden. Anyone who is denied due process or fired from public employment for free speach is entitled to defense.

I’m not sure it’s worth the effort to try to rescue this discussion, but let me try a different tack:

What these stories have in common is that, in the 21st century, nothing is private. A judge can expect his personal emails to find their way into a newspaper. A coach can expect his behavior at team practices to find their way on to YouTube. People have always shared jokes some might find offensive; coaches (some coaches at least) have long used insults and humiliation in their training.

So some people got offended by what they saw. It seems to bother Rob, but racist jokes and homophobic slurs aren’t as quietly accepted as they were a generation or two ago. It’s the 21st century, and you shouldn’t go around calling students “faggots” on a college campus and expect everyone to just laugh it off.

Sure, you can say these things, but if you’re in a public position – a federal judge or a highly-paid coach at a state university – you shouldn’t expect that what you say doesn’t matter. Rob does a disservice to the First Amendment by implying that freedom of speech is a shield against criticism or accountability for what anyone says. It isn’t.

No, go ahead and criticize. But a coach in a private, closed practice, and a judge sending emails to his friends, do not equate racism or homophobia, and do not warrant losing their jobs. It actually degrades the concepts of racism and homophobia to something meaningless. Such that that girl on CNN can’t distinguish between child molestation and calling someone a faggot.

Two more points: Of course it’s not like Penn State, in that throwing a ball at a player isn’t like raping a kid in the shower. But while Rob may have missed it, there has been lots of criticism in recent years of the arrogance, insularity and “rules-don’t-apply-to-us” attitudes present in top-level college athletics. That attitude, and the cover-up it supported, is part of the story of Penn State, and it’s legitimate to question whether it was present at Rutgers as well.

As for coaches, I have great respect for Doc Rivers. He was asked last week about the Rutgers situation and just shook his head. That’s not how we coach, he said (or words to tat effect), and that’s not the kind of coaching I believe in. His son, Austin, now in the NBA, is a recent graduate from a big-college program, and I’m sure Doc has seen plenty of in-your-face a-hole coaches. He thinks there’s a better way teach basketball, and I tend to agree.

Doc might just be my favorite coach in professional sports all time. I remember watching a playoff game years ago between the Celts and the Nets where Rivers was doing the play by play and it was already pretty much known he’d be going on to coach the following year. You could sense he knew the challenges to present these players while respecting, even loving them at the same time. He knew he’d be challenging himself as well.

But, Rick, Rutgers knew what they were hiring and sought it out, and Rice was doing his job. and he was working with adults, not kids. And in the context of how he coaches, it wasn’t offensive. and its still free speech. and we don’t want to live in a world in which people are afraid to think and speak. I realize that that is Carmen Ortiz’s perfect world, but you wouldn’t want to live in that dark place.

A few years ago I was at Franklin High School in the evening for some event, there was a basketball game going on, and I went in via the field house entrance. While I was there I saw the coaches for the other team literally drag a kid into an office, shut the door, and start yelling at him. Apparently the kid was late. The language used was abusive, they called the kid all sorts of names and didn’t let up. Eventually another mom and I tried to intervene, but the door was locked and they ignored our knocks – probably couldn’t hear them. When they came out, the coach just brushed past us.

The next day I called the other school and spoke to the principal, then documented the incident in an email. The principal followed up, the coach acknowledged it, was supposedly given a warning, and he and the assistant coach sent me an apology. They said they apologized to the player, the team, our team and the player’s parents as well, although I have no idea if that really happened. Did they learn anything besides making sure they yell at players in a sound-proof room? Don’t know, but I’m glad I spoke up.

You can argue that the coach was exercising his 1st Amendment rights when he yelled at that kid, but that didn’t make his actions proper. His team lost that night, by the way, and it wasn’t close.

Are you proposing that the right of free speech supercedes the right of an employer to terminate an employee for his performance on the job? Are you saying that because Rutgers hired the coach and “knew what they were getting,” he can never be removed?

Nope. But I’m saying that he didn’t do anything wrong. Ask him to tone it down, maybe. But as has also been pointed out, he has the ability to turn it down, or off. When he’s on the side during the games, he paces and he moves a lot, but he does have control. When he’s working, he involved in a shtick that seems to work. That’s what he was hired for. You can fire anyone at anytime, pretty much, but smearing him and defaming him over this is absurd.

“You do understand the difference between a high school child and an adult basketball player, right?”

Of course I do, and I also understand that the coach was an ADULT who shouldn’t have been screaming abuse at a teenage player. Seems like you’re implying that the kid was somehow at fault for the coach’s lack of control.

You falsely cite me and my book to give cover to your own nauseating racism. The next time you spread filth like the above, please leave me out of it. I detest your opinions and the person who holds them.

At the top of this post, I cited to the Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine, and now that I’ve finished it I want to be clear, since several folks have noted that they read my recommendations, that I’m not recommending this book, although, since it will probably end up in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble in a few weeks, it might we worth a buck for light beach reading. As some of you may recall, I’ve been raving about Levine’s books for a number of years, his 1992 book about 1848 which I reviewed when I was still in California and his 2006 book Confederate Emancipation. Both were excellent, highly sourced and very readable. In fact, my first inkling, since this Levine is at University of Illinois instead of UC Santa Cruz, and the publisher is Random House, not Oxford, that maybe this wasn’t the same guy. Nonetheless, the photos on the jacket seem to show the same author, even if he isn’t aging well. Strangely, the death spiral for this book begins on the very first page, when he describes Edgar Allan Poe as a “southern” author. Well, we all know that Poe is from Boston and that his writing is pure Red Sox, Reverse the Curse Boston angst. But where do you go from there when you get an easy fact wrong on the first page? But I still like his quote defining racism. Its the only memorable thing about this weak effort.

As his comment makes clear, Bruce Levine needs an editor in life as much as he needs an editor for his book. I guess if each book is inferior to the one before it, then I guess you get hyper defensive. I’d have to fight the parakeet to get the shredded remnants of Bruce Levine’s book out of the cage, but I’ll bet that the quote is accurate.

What’s also interesting about his quote is that it demonstrates one of the biggest problems with his book–for a guy who writes about race and the South, his understanding of racism is scanty. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have a clue about what racism is, other than the fact that he had a good quote defining it. When I was doing my review, I flagged that quote because he seemed, on some level, to get it, and them he blows it. I’m not sure what his book is about, but since I don’t respect his book, I don’t give a damn about his comments.

He also demonstrates a curious inability to do basic research. If I had written the Fall of the House of Dixie, I’d be grateful for any attention at all. Instead, he makes a gratuitous attack on a guy who writes curriculum reviews of current civil war histories read by over 1000 college professors world wide. Not smart.

And for what its worth, and maybe Rick can explain this, my comment on his book came before his comment, so I’m not sure why it says nine pm last night.

There was a great quote from a player at rutgers defending rice. He pointed out that ad an nba player, he’ll make millions and can move his mom and sisters out of the slums of Camden. If being called a faggot makes that more likely, that’s fine with him. He also asked who do they think they are protecting?

That’s just great.* The quoted player has learned that accepting homophobic, insulting, and assaultive behavior by folks is OK if he can just go along with it, lending his silence as tacit support, as long as he gets a good-paying job. Just the kind of ethics we want to encourage in our educational institutions.

You’re just plain wrong. And your idealism is misplaced. Its not homophobia and its not abuse. Its motivational speaking in a venue in which such speaking is appropriate. It is absolutely amazing that in the United States you don’t need victims for their to be crimes, whether its the war on drugs, the war on sex work or the war on thought. Mike Rice has been convicted of thought crimes, even though there is no evidence that he actually thought anything that our society does not approve of. We are living in the Brave New World.

Mr. Meltzer, I simply cannot fathom your reasoning. You apparently feel that consistently abusive language, slurs, physical attacks, and throwing objects at athletes is acceptable behavior by a coach as long as his players are adults and not children. Is it really that difficult for you to understand that such chronic, hotheaded, out-of-control behavior is not only unwarranted, ineffective, and pathological, but unacceptable at every level of sport (amateur or professional and whether the athletes are adults or not). Not only that, if you would take the time to review the full statement of the Rutgers President you will discover that his belated firing of Rice was not merely for the gay slur (which I believe was cause enough for his dismissal, although it has become clear that you and one of his teenaged “adult” players has no problem with such language if putting up with it insures the slim chance of making future millions). His termination was for repeated ACTIONS that were “deeply offensive and egregiously violate the university’s core values.” Again, your insistence that it is somehow a free speech issue is both ludicrous and an irrelevant diversion.

Until the peace is breached, government has no role to play. Unlike you, I don’t elect to impose my values on anyone. you also have a touching childish naivete that makes me suspect that Disneyland is your favorite retreat.

Any employer can get sued as well. And if Rice wants to sue Rutgers, I guess he can. Will you represent him on the grounds his employer cannot terminate him over his job performance in the facility it owns? Will you claim the First Amendment allows all employees to say whatever they want, whenever they want, without consequences? Wouldn’t you then be asking the government to interfere in a private contract?

Governments have been chartering schools on this continent since 1639, if memory serves. State universities were founded by Jefferson, Franklin and probably some other founders. After your anarchist revolution, you can burn down all the schools. Until then, they can hire and fire coaches and professors according to the contracts they have negotiated with them.

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